1. Onboard Instruments of ASTROSAT
Ultra-Violet Imaging Telescope for ASTROSAT
ASTROSAT is India’s first dedicated astronomy Satellite and put in earth orbit in space with ISRO launch vehicle PSLV C-30 on September 28, ASTROSAT currently is on a multi-wavelength astronomy mission having an IRS-class satellite into a near-Earth, equatorial orbit by the PSLV. The 4 instruments on-board cover the visible ( nm), near UV ( nm), far UV ( nm), soft X-ray (0.3-8 keV and 2-10 keV) and hard X-ray (3-80 keV and keV) regions of the electromagnetic spectrum.
UVIT The satellite is a collaborative effort of the TIF, ISRO Satellite Centre, IIA, RRI, IUCAA and PRL, all of which are involved in the development of hardware for this mission. In addition, several centers of ISRO are involved in the designing of components and subsystems and several other institutes are involved in developing software for the mission. The Canadian Space Agency is also involved in the making of this satellite.
IIA roles is very much significant on each and every stage of development of UVIT. UVIT is a key payload of ASTROSAT and designed, fabricated and assembled and tested at MGK Menon Laboratory of Space Science, CREST-Indian Institute of Astrophysics. This is a unique clean room facility created by IIA for integration and testing of Space instrumentation. After complete tests and calibration at above lab, UVIT was handed over to ISRO for launch
Onboard Instruments of ASTROSAT
Twin 40-cm Ultraviolet Imaging Telescopes (UVIT) covering Far-UV to optical bands.
Three units of Large Area Xenon Proportional Counters (LAXPC) covering medium energy X-rays from 3 to 80 keV with an effective area of 6000 sq.cm. at 10 keV.
A Soft X-ray Telescope (SXT) with conical foil mirrors and X-ray CCD detector, covering the energy range keV. The effective area will be about 200 sq.cm. at 1 keV.
A Cadmium-Zinc-Telluride coded-mask imager (CZTI), covering hard X-rays from 10 to keV, with about 10 deg field of view and 1000 sq.cm. effective area.
UVIT Technical Specification
Telescope:
Aperture : mm
Optical Configuration: RC
Focal Length: mm
Plate Scale: micron/arc Sec
Field of View: arc min
Detector:
Microchannel Plate + Photon-counting CMOS
3 channels: FUV, NUV, VIS simultaneous
Filters:
FUV ( nm): Caf2, Baf2, Sapphire, Silica, Grating, Block
NUV ( nm ) : Caf2, Silica, NUV13, NUV15, NUVB4, NUVN Grating, Block
VIS: Bk7, VIS1, VIS2, VIS3, ND, Block
Sensitivity: ~ 20 mag
Image resol: arc-sec
Temporal resolution: ms, full frame,< 5 ms, small window
Indian Institute of Astrophysics II Block, Koramangala, Bangalore , INDIA